Aboriginal liaison worker doubted police would look for missing woman

Morris Bates

Photograph by: Jon Murray
, The Province

VANCOUVER — A former native liaison worker warned a young woman that looking for her long-lost mother Elsie Sebastian wouldn't be a priority for Vancouver police because Elsie was an older, drug-addicted aboriginal woman.

Morris Bates admitted to the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday that he told Donnalee Sebastian in 1999 that he doubted the Vancouver police would even bother looking for her mother.

"I tried to find Elsie, first in 1994 when her daughter wanted her mom to be at her high school grad and then in 1999, when her daughter wanted to tell her mom she'd become a grandma to a little boy," said Bates, a burly man who was once a well-known Elvis impersonator who joined the Vancouver Police and Native Liaison Society in 1993.

Bates said he tried to find Elsie but the Vancouver Police Department made no effort at all, to his knowledge. "The police weren't going to try to find her, but I tried."

"The family made four separate attempts to engage the VPD in a search for Elsie, in 1993, 1994, 1999 and 2001, but they were not successful?" Bates was asked by lawyer Neil Chantler, acting for the Sebastian family and 24 other families of missing or murdered women.

Bates agreed that he was first contacted about Elsie Sebastian in February, 1994 when VANDU (the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users) founder Ann Livingstone, who was related by marriage to Elsie, asked Bates to look for her. Elsie was 42, a known heroin user, who had children with Robert Sebastian. Bates had been good friends with Robert Sebastian and his brother Gordon Sebastian, a renowned aboriginal rights lawyer, since the three boys were 13.

Bates tried to find Elsie but failed in 1994.

In 1999, a grieving Donnalee came back to the native liaison society, looking for Elsie to tell her she had become a grandmother. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, that's what Donnalee was told by you?" Chantler asked Bates, who agreed he likely had said that.

"Because she (Elsie) was a much older native woman, looking for her wouldn't be a priority for police . . . younger non-aboriginal women would get priority over a 40-year-old native, drug-addicted woman, do you recall saying that?" Chantler asked Bates.

"I might have said something like that," Bates said, emphasizing he was talking about what the VPD would say about why they hadn't looked for Elsie, not his own personal feelings.

"Did her mother's age impact the VPD's willingness to search for her?" asked Chantler. Bates replied that it would. He also agreed with Chantler that Elsie's race and her drug addiction, also made it highly unlikely the VPD would bother searching for her. In fact, the VPD did not open an official missing persons file on Elsie Sebastian until 2001.

Bates also related on the stand Tuesday that he vividly recalled the first time a VPD officer appeared in his opinion to recognize that dozens of women were missing and had met with foul play.

The "boyfriend" of a missing woman came to Bates with information that his girlfriend Mona Wilson had not picked up her welfare cheque. Bates asked the native liaison constable he worked with if he could find out whether Wilson, who was dependent on methadone, had picked up her daily allotment.

The constable reported back that Wilson hadn't been seen, just as a new VPD Missing Persons detective walked in the door. In his book, Bates writes that he told the new detective there was a problem. "When a person doesn't pick up their free money and free drugs, I think there is something seriously wrong," Bates said to the detective, who promptly replied that should was likely dead.

Bates said the Missing Persons detective in 2001 "was the first representative of the Vancouver Police Department to acknowledge to me or possibly to anyone else that there was indeed a serious missing persons problem."

Once the joint RCMP-VPD Missing Women Task Force got on the Pickton farm in February, 2002, the blood of Mona Wilson was found to have soaked through a mattress in the floor of Robert Pickton's trailer. She was named in the first two murder charges laid against Pickton on Feb. 22, 2002, and he was convicted of her murder.

Inquiry Commissioner Wally Oppal has been refused an extension to his funding or time limits and will hand in his final report by the end of June.

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